October 12, 2011

A Major Challenge

One of our Go Ape instructors, Paul is taking on a whole new challenge. Here he tells us a little bit more. Smoke, Water, Dirt, Obstacles, Mud & Hills. These are all things that I shall soon be getting up close and personal with over a distance of between 10km and 12km. Believe it or not this is meant to be fun, hard to believe when your race number holds your Next of Kin details on the reverse!

I stumbled across the Major Series by accident really and before I knew it my details had been submitted and the 15th of October was to be etched into my mind. Quite spontaneous for someone who’d never entered such a thing before. Taking on challenges both enforced and by choice has become something of the norm of late, with this latest venture being a mere warm up for what could be the biggest challenge of my life!

March 2010 saw me walk into my local AFCO (Armed Forces Careers Office) and begin the recruitment process for the Royal Marines. After completing several stages of the process I had one more to do, and come July I had my date for it. September 2010 was going to be my final test to see if I had what it takes to start the 32 weeks of training to become a Royal Marine.

Before that date and test was to come I had my first of a few bad injuries which led to my withdrawal from recruitment. Recovering from injury is always a frustrating time and the goals I had at the time seemed a long way off. Fast-forward a year and the physio appointments are getting fewer and the urge to train can be contained no more.
As well as the training it was time to get back into work and Go Ape Dalby was to be the one. Working in the Forest has been great, renewing my passions for the outdoors and allowing me the chance to sneak in the odd bit of physio here and there. With my fitness now returning to decent levels I ventured back into the AFCO and returned to the recruitment process. Within a week I had a date for a fitness test, one I had passed previously but I knew it wasn’t going to be easy.

This was a reality check and swiftly prompted me to explore additional avenues to help boost my fitness. A day off with the world wide web at your finger tips can be a dangerous thing, there’s a certain attractiveness to those brightly coloured websites especially when sat in a comfy seat with mug of tea in hand. With the event entered I now had two new short-term goals with neither one of them being more than a few weeks away.

Help for Heroes is a fantastic charity that works tirelessly to assist our wounded service men and women. With obvious connections to a possible future career and with both friends and family currently serving and returning from theatre in Afghan it is a charity that I hold dear. It seemed a no-brainer that this event was the ideal opportunity to fundraise for this fantastic charity.

Having set up a donation page and received my first donation a mere couple of minutes after announcing it on my Facebook page I knew it was the right thing to do. As the event has neared the donations have kept on coming in. My fitness test went well and I passed it for the second time. The event is under a week away now and I am looking forward to it more each day.

I’d like to take this opportunity to thank the Go Ape team and all that have contributed for their support. Without your generosity Help for Heroes could not continue with its work to help our heroes get better. I hope to have lots of photos from the event as there will be a professional photographer covering the course on race day, along with a couple of supporters I’ve roped into coming along. And below are some websites related to my challenge:
http://www.majorseries.com/  The official site of the event.
http://www.helpforheroes.org.uk/  The charity I’m fundraising for.

And lastly, wish me luck!